Balancing medicine prices and business sustainability: analyses of pharmacy costs, revenues and profit shed light on retail medicine mark-ups in rural Kyrgyzstan.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Numerous not-for-profit pharmacies have been created to improve access to medicines for the poor, but many have failed due to insufficient financial planning and management. These pharmacies are not well described in health services literature despite strong demand from policy makers, implementers, and researchers. Surveys reporting unaffordable medicine prices and high mark-ups have spurred efforts to reduce medicine prices, but price reduction goals are arbitrary in the absence of information on pharmacy costs, revenues, and profit structures. Health services research is needed to develop sustainable and "reasonable" medicine price goals and strategic initiatives to reach them.

Methods

We utilized cost accounting methods on inventory and financial information ob

SUBMITTER: Waning B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2914726 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature